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I find it funny that anyone believes F35 will be able to survive even in a range of a moderate quality SAM without massive support - it might be stealthy enough

I find it funny that anyone believes F35 will be able to survive even in a range of a moderate quality SAM without massive support - it might be stealthy enough at this moment from the front, but it's rear is one huge bullseye for radar/ir

ckozlowski 11y ago
I think the important thing to understand there is that stealth is not a persistent, invulnerable defense. It's a mitigation; a defense with limitations. What it does do is give the F-35 the ability to get close enough to get the first shot, and eliminate the threat. In any air campaign, destruction of defenses is going to be prioritized, and hunting them will be the job of the F-35. That unfortunately is not something the A-10 can currently do.
- yxhuvud 11y ago
  The problem with that argument is that the purpose of the CAS use case isn't to wage an air campaign - it is to wage a ground campaign. That mean the plane will have to be able to stick around in the air for more than a trivial amount of time. Which in turn means that there can be hidden or mobile air defences that may get deployed while the fight is ongoing.
- imglorp 11y ago
  All true, but you're mixing up the profiles. In the Gulf era, you'd first send in stealth to take out C&C, AAA and SAM sites and get started on parked air forces. Then you'd send the fighters and escorted bombers to own the airspace and finish destroying their air force. That was the first few days. Then you'd be clear to go in with ground forces, which needed plenty of CAS against all the old Russian tanks. Then you'd be in for as many years as your budget allowed of going door-to-door and cave-to-cave on foot with CAS against "insurgents". The new profile is that last part, at least for our current problems. If we're going up against the Russians or Chinese, then we'll be back to F35's doing standoff at 100 miles.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I thought that for the US destroying enemy air defence is the job of cruise missiles?
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    Yeah, a lot of people seem to be missing that. They're all talking about sending in the F-35 first, but to me you actually send in cruise missiles and or drones first to take out the known threats, and then send in the F-35 to take out in-flight enemy aircraft. Assuming you have half decent satellite intelligence (which we know the US does), it doesn't make sense for the US to risk pilot's lives no matter what they're flying.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Except you'd want to use a dedicated fighter for the air superiority role. The F35 doesn't do that that well.
  - ckozlowski 11y ago
    For some, yes. Works for stationary sites. For mobile or previously concealed systems, not so much. You need a way to re-target the weapon in flight, securely, and that's assuming you detect it. If it's a manned platform doing this, then it's more efficient to bomb it where you are (assuming it hasn't detected you in turn!) If it's a different platform, say, a stealthy drone, then you could conceivably direct a cruise missile strike, but this has its own challenges. Cruise missiles take a while to reach their destination, both because they're standoff weapons (hundreds of nm) and their relatively slow speed needed to achieve that range. All cruise missiles in the US inventory are subsonic, and the few international ones that are supersonic are good for only a few dozen km. Hunting mobile systems with cruise missiles isn't too practical for these reasons. Adversaries have been paying attention, and that all of us here can recognize that a US opening move will be "cruise missile wave" should tell you how well you can expect an adversary to be prepared for that. I posted a link above where it went into detail the vulnerability the A-10 has to small mobile and man-portable missile systems. These warnings became evident in Desert Storm and only got more pronounced as this level of technology trickled down. The A-10 was viewed as capable in the 70s and 80s, where your primary threats were guns and early mobile missile systems. And even then, the expectation was that the expected lifetime was not very long. They would delay and harass Soviet first-echelon forces, and pay a heavy cost for doing so. That they took notable losses from a second-rate ground force that had been heavily attributed for 8 years against Iran told the Air Force that this day they would need to be retired would come sooner than expected. They were fine enough for the Balkans and Iraq in '03 when you could reasonably expect to eliminate most anti-air threats with the F-16, but this isn't expected to be feasible in the next conflict. Speed, sensors, and countermeasures (stealth and ECM) are what's needed. Low and slow won't be sufficient unfortunately. The A-10C got some of these improvements in the sensors and ECM department, but unfortunately it's not enough.
tsotha 11y ago
SAMs may be fine for shooting down airliners, but they're not very effective against fighters. You realize the US lost only one F-16 in the 2003 attack on Iraq, and that was to "fuel starvation"? And no, the rear of the F-35 isn't much less stealth than the front. You're probably thinking of IR.
- emp_zealoth 11y ago
  Actually, F35's stealth is rumored to be very limited from a lot of angles. It is pretty nonexistent from the back - thanks to huge, not really stealth-enabling shaped engine. (Look how different the F22 is from the rear)

ckozlowski 11y ago

I think the important thing to understand there is that stealth is not a persistent, invulnerable defense. It's a mitigation; a defense with limitations. What it does do is give the F-35 the ability to get close enough to get the first shot, and eliminate the threat. In any air campaign, destruction of defenses is going to be prioritized, and hunting them will be the job of the F-35. That unfortunately is not something the A-10 can currently do.

yxhuvud 11y ago
The problem with that argument is that the purpose of the CAS use case isn't to wage an air campaign - it is to wage a ground campaign. That mean the plane will have to be able to stick around in the air for more than a trivial amount of time. Which in turn means that there can be hidden or mobile air defences that may get deployed while the fight is ongoing.
imglorp 11y ago
All true, but you're mixing up the profiles. In the Gulf era, you'd first send in stealth to take out C&C, AAA and SAM sites and get started on parked air forces. Then you'd send the fighters and escorted bombers to own the airspace and finish destroying their air force. That was the first few days. Then you'd be clear to go in with ground forces, which needed plenty of CAS against all the old Russian tanks. Then you'd be in for as many years as your budget allowed of going door-to-door and cave-to-cave on foot with CAS against "insurgents". The new profile is that last part, at least for our current problems. If we're going up against the Russians or Chinese, then we'll be back to F35's doing standoff at 100 miles.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
I thought that for the US destroying enemy air defence is the job of cruise missiles?
- UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
  Yeah, a lot of people seem to be missing that. They're all talking about sending in the F-35 first, but to me you actually send in cruise missiles and or drones first to take out the known threats, and then send in the F-35 to take out in-flight enemy aircraft. Assuming you have half decent satellite intelligence (which we know the US does), it doesn't make sense for the US to risk pilot's lives no matter what they're flying.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Except you'd want to use a dedicated fighter for the air superiority role. The F35 doesn't do that that well.
- ckozlowski 11y ago
  For some, yes. Works for stationary sites. For mobile or previously concealed systems, not so much. You need a way to re-target the weapon in flight, securely, and that's assuming you detect it. If it's a manned platform doing this, then it's more efficient to bomb it where you are (assuming it hasn't detected you in turn!) If it's a different platform, say, a stealthy drone, then you could conceivably direct a cruise missile strike, but this has its own challenges. Cruise missiles take a while to reach their destination, both because they're standoff weapons (hundreds of nm) and their relatively slow speed needed to achieve that range. All cruise missiles in the US inventory are subsonic, and the few international ones that are supersonic are good for only a few dozen km. Hunting mobile systems with cruise missiles isn't too practical for these reasons. Adversaries have been paying attention, and that all of us here can recognize that a US opening move will be "cruise missile wave" should tell you how well you can expect an adversary to be prepared for that. I posted a link above where it went into detail the vulnerability the A-10 has to small mobile and man-portable missile systems. These warnings became evident in Desert Storm and only got more pronounced as this level of technology trickled down. The A-10 was viewed as capable in the 70s and 80s, where your primary threats were guns and early mobile missile systems. And even then, the expectation was that the expected lifetime was not very long. They would delay and harass Soviet first-echelon forces, and pay a heavy cost for doing so. That they took notable losses from a second-rate ground force that had been heavily attributed for 8 years against Iran told the Air Force that this day they would need to be retired would come sooner than expected. They were fine enough for the Balkans and Iraq in '03 when you could reasonably expect to eliminate most anti-air threats with the F-16, but this isn't expected to be feasible in the next conflict. Speed, sensors, and countermeasures (stealth and ECM) are what's needed. Low and slow won't be sufficient unfortunately. The A-10C got some of these improvements in the sensors and ECM department, but unfortunately it's not enough.

tsotha 11y ago

SAMs may be fine for shooting down airliners, but they're not very effective against fighters. You realize the US lost only one F-16 in the 2003 attack on Iraq, and that was to "fuel starvation"? And no, the rear of the F-35 isn't much less stealth than the front. You're probably thinking of IR.

emp_zealoth 11y ago
Actually, F35's stealth is rumored to be very limited from a lot of angles. It is pretty nonexistent from the back - thanks to huge, not really stealth-enabling shaped engine. (Look how different the F22 is from the rear)